Luis Blanco - Biography#

Luis Blanco made important contributions to the fields of DNA replication and repair, being focused in the discovery and characterization of DNA polymerases. His first discovery, Phi29 DNA polymerase (1984), unravelled the mechanism of protein-primed DNA replication, and provided the worldwide paradigm for isothermal DNA amplification of both circular and genomic DNA due to its extraordinary processivity and strand-displacement. Luis Blanco pioneered the structure-function studies in DNA polymerases since 1987, identiying a universally conserved 3´-5´ exonuclease active site in proofreading DNA pols, and the most conserved amino acid sequence motifs involved in DNA polymerization. Since he started his own lab at 1998, Professor Blanco studied the NHEJ mechanism for repairing double-strand breaks in DNA, both in eukaryotes and prokaryotes, discovering new DNA pols from viruses, bacteria and yeast. Significantly, Blanco lab discovered 3 out of the 17 known DNA pols in humans: in 2000, cellular DNA pol mu (Pol μ), specically involved in NHEJ and having a role in both DNA repair and variability; in 2002, Blanco´s lab reported the discovery and characterization of human DNA pol lambda (Pol λ), involved in meiosis, BER and NHEJ; his most recent discovery (2013) is human PrimPol, a novel DNA primase/DNA pol involved in DNA damage tolerance during mitochondrial DNA replication, and repriming of stalled replication forks during chromosomal replication in human cells. Prof. Blanco also has a long and solid trajectory in transferring basic research to biotech companies, started with the well known patents on Phi29 DNApol (1989 - 2013), licenced to General Electric to develop and commercialize the most relevant techniques for whole genome isothermal amplification (TempliPhi and GenomiPhi). In 2008, Blanco and Genetrix founded X-Pol Biotech S.L., a spin-off focused on biotechnological applications of DNA polymerases, which merged with the german biotech SYGNIS in 2012, later with EXPEDEON in 2016, and becoming 4BASEBIO in 2020 (now listed at the London and Frankfurt Stock Exchange markets). In collaboration with Sygnis, Luis Blanco developed a novel method of isothermal DNA amplification (TruePrime™), which is now central for producing GMP synthetic DNA for vaccines and gene therapy (https://www.4basebio.com).